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Meerschweinchen musik

A while back, film scribe Vadim Rizov asked the Internets for some of the music from Interkosmos. Thanks to the kind offices of the Gurgling Cod and his fancy mp3-generating turntable, we are able to oblige with sides one and two of the vinyl-only album [for a limited time, natch.] Shame you can't upload its beautiful letterpress sleeve....

Here's why you should go download it.

The music for the film was created by Jim Becker and Colleen Burke with additional drum parts by Jim White and additional vocals by Jiha Lee and Amy Warren. Besides writing and touring with his band Califone, Jim Becker most recently has toured with the bands Freakwater and the Dirty Three. As well as playing piano in the band We Ragazzi, Colleen Burke recently toured with Smog and is currently collaborating with filmmaker Eve Sussman to develop a musical film in Miami. Jiha Lee has sang and played flute with Bright Eyes and The Good Life. Amy Warren is a Chicago singer and actress who has sung with Tallulah and The Aluminum Group. Dirty Three drummer Jim White has toured and recorded with Cat Power, Nick Cave, Will Oldham and recently played percussion on the score of Nick Cave's film The Proposition.

Ars gratia artis

Via We Love You So, covetable selections from this year's Crazy 4 Cult art show.

What he said

So I saw (500) Days of Summer finally, on the big screen in Harvard Square, after skipping it in favor of I forget what back in April at the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Frankly, I'm surprised at the relatively rapturous response it's getting from critics, sheer adorableness of the leads aside.

I mean, I like the Smiths. I like Hall & Oates. I thought the UCLA band was a nice touch. Ditto the Han-Solo-as-Bogey nod to Breathless. I killed singing the Pixies ["Wave of Mutilation," not "Here Comes Your Man," but still] the only time I played Rock Band. Hell, my brothers have been playing the penis game for years. What is wrong with me that I wasn't charmed utterly?

Then I watched Globe critics Wesley Morris and Ty Burr's take on Summer. And I encourage you to do likewise, not just because they have even better chemistry than Summer and Tom do. Wesley totally nails the cause of my unease:

"I'm just rooting for Zooey Deschanel to be something more than a notional girl, that's all."

Amen and hallelujah.

[Also, hasn't she inspired enough young men to go for their dreams already?]

Essential 3rd act twists

Credit Dresden Codak, via Britopia. My current favorite may be "Schadenfreude proves unruly."

Paging Maria Braun

Holy Fassbinder! Taxi dancing is experiencing a revival in Berlin.

...[Roland] Waizenegger became inspired by stories of taxi dancers, a trade that peaked in popularity in the 1920s and 30s in Berlin and other major cities. (The term is derived from the fact that a dancer's pay is proportional to the amount of time spent with a patron, like that of a taxi driver.) In Berlin between the two world wars, when young able-bodied men were fairly thin on the ground, ousted aristocrats and jobless army officers with posh manners began earning money spinning ladies in the city's many dance halls. (Billy Wilder, a Polish-born Hollywood film director, allegedly worked as a taxi dancer in Berlin for several months in 1926. He was a 20-year-old aspiring journalist at the time.)

Which of these things is not like the other?

Here's what's listed as "Inside Arts" on the Times' main Arts page right now:

John Dawson, Country-Rock Songwriter, Dies at 64

Les Lye, Canadian TV Comic, Dies at 84

Film Review | 'The Ugly Truth': Girl Meets Ape, and Complications Ensue

Movie Review | 'The English Surgeon': The Doctor Who Went Into the Ukrainian Cold

Movie Review | 'Shrink': Physician, Drug Thyself: Psychiatrist in Hollywood

Movie Review | 'The Answer Man': God Helps Those Who Help a Grump

Movie Review | 'G-Force': Keeping the World Safe for Rodents

Movie Review | 'Orphan': New Kid in the House, Clearly Up to Something

Theater Review | 'Haunted House': Two Ghouls Collide on the Jersey Shore

Theater Review | 'Trilogia Della Villeggiatura': La Dolce Villa? Holiday Misadventures, 18th-Century Style

Music Review | Das Racist: Wryly Rapping on Race (and Fast Food, Too)

Music Review | Vitaly Pisarenko and Jeffrey Swann: Two Pianists: A Virtuoso and a Philosophizer

Inside Art: Sackler Consignment Offered by Sotheby’s

Antiques: Arts and Crafts From Bloomsbury Days

Art in Review

Can you tell which item struck me as hiLARious? Sigh, once an editor, always an editor...

Rainy days and Tuesdays always get me down

St. Nick - Clip 1 from ST NICK on Vimeo.

It's been raw and rainy all day. Totally creativity/productivity-sapping weather. Then I discovered that the beginning of one of the most beautiful films I've seen this year is online. So I thought I'd share these nine minutes of David Lowery's St. Nick with you. Enjoy.

[The sound design gives me shivers.]

Back and to the left

Trust me, you don't want to hear about the one movie I've seen in theatres this summer [The Hangover], or the string of mediocre rental selections [Spring Breakdown, Hamlet 2, Leatherheads], or the miserable in-flight movie [He's Just Not That Into You], or my exhausted, half-remembered Flaherty memories of a movie about naked mole rats. Actually, that one was pretty bad-ass, as was seeing Robert Flaherty's studies for a [never-completed] doc on Guernica shot at MoMA.

In sum, it's been a fairly fallow summer for movies thus far. I'm hoping to improve my luck during a quick jaunt to Boston this coming week. Fingers crossed.

But! One bright spot: Yesterday, I snagged an Athena 224-ES [or perhaps 224A] Motion Analyzer 16mm projector from campus surplus. Haven't tested to see whether it works yet, but the documentation promises "Forward and Reverse, without flicker" and "Unlimited single-frame hold time." I know where there's a stash of 16mm features on campus and am thinking serious flicker party time looms in my future. Anyone out there played with one of these babies? Pipe up in the comments, s.v.p.

Where are you going? Where have you been?

Oh hai! [waves shyly]. There are reasons I have neglected my corner of the Interweb of late, swear. Chief among them is that when I left my home on June 11 for a 10-day holiday on a remote and wifi-free island, I had no idea I wouldn't be returning until this coming Monday, a month later. In between there was a stint getting seminarians drunk at the Flaherty and, well, a lot of icing of kegs. So give me a couple more days to regroup and finish my nomadic adventure and I promise to ply you with prose cinematic. Soon.